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AN ESSAY 



ON 



PUBLIC EDUCATIO^^ 



IN CALIFORNIA; 



ELICITED BY A BILL NOW PENDING BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE 11^ 
REFERENCE TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF SAN FRANCISCO, 



BY ARTHUR B. STOUT, M. D. 

FEBRUARY 1866. 



SAN FRANCISCO : 

Agnew & DeEfebach Printers, cor. Sansonie ami Merchiint Streets 

1866. 



AN ESSAY 



ON 



PUBLIC EDUCATION 



IN CALIFORNIA 



ELICITED BY A BILL NOW PENDING BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE IN 
REFERENCE TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF SAN FRANCISCO, 



BY ARTHUR B. STOUT, M. D. 

FEBRUARY 1866. 



SAN FRANCISCO : 

Agnew & Deffebach Printers, cor. Sansome s.ud Merchant Streets. 

1866. 



PUBLIC EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA. 



Scientia Sermo Dei. 



The great theme worthy of public attention in California, is 
the amount of education which should be granted to the youthful 
candidates for instruction in the public schools. Is it enough 
that the education afforded by the State, to the children of the 
State, should be restricted to the first elements of Letters ? or, is 
it a wiser political economy to elevate to the highest available 
standard of learning the mass of the youth who become the re- 
cipients of the public care ? The principles applicable to all 
men who take an active part in the conduct of a free government, 
are most essentially and virtually those which should be enacted 
in California. The extraordinary position of this State before 
the world, calls for and solicits the most rapid possible progress 
in human knowledge. Its ra[jid advance to become the richest 
State in the Union, urges that it should hasten to become the 
wisest, or else, if ignorance prevail, it may be menaced soon to 
become the poorest. 

The great object of most men in life, is to leave a handsome 
inheritance to their children ; the bulk of mankind fail to acquire 
such a fortune — but in America, all men may endow their off- 
spring with a possession more valuable and constant than money, 
and which, if fairly invested, will never fail to yield its steady, 
interest ; augment its capital in a rapidly increasing ratio, and 
elevate the moral and intellectual standard of its possessor. 
That inestimable possession is education. The incentive to tliese 
remarks is the present crisis in the Free School system of Cali- 
fornia — a crisis which menaces degeneration, for the reason that 
it proposes retrogression. The free school system of California. 
as illustrated in the City of San Francisco, has been of late 
years developing with astonishing rapidity the noblest system of 
education in the world. Of this, the most unmistakable evidence 
is the alacrity with which the ambitious and thirsty zeal of Young 



America crowds to overflowing the halls of public learniDg. It 
is difficult to build up school houses fast enough to receive the 
growing flock. But now and suddenly, in full career, a bill be- 
fore a Legislature of the 19th century, and styled the Hagar 
bill, proposes by public enactment to impair this system ; to lop 
it of its fair proportions, and to scatter to idleness, or to unletter- 
ed toil, a large proportion of its beneficiaries. This proposed 
Act, if not composed, yet fathered by Senator Hagar, may have 
originally emanated from a great economist, but certainly never 
from an eminent statesman. It inculcates, with what truth is yet 
to be learned, that the thought of the intelligent men of California 
is, that the duty of the State to its future electors is to provide them 
with the least, and not the most instruction in its power — or, in 
other words, to escape from its obligation at the cheapest possible 
rate, or to be as indulgent to the bill as possible : if, at the present 
rate of taxation, the smallest deficit in the funds should occur, 
to- cut down the schools, rather than rai?e the tax. 

One might suppose that some enemy of the commonwealth, 
seeking insidiously to wound it in its most sensitive point, to 
overthrow it by applying an irresistable lever beneath its main 
supporting column, had conspired thus to win his object, and 
sought in the eminence of Senator Hagar, an unsuspected instru- 
ment of his wickedness. 

If rumor may be relied on, another bill still more stringent in 
its propositions, will be introduced in the Legislature to amerid 
the State school system. It may be confidently hoped that the 
fate of the present bill before an enlightened body of statesmen, 
may warn its author of its certain destiny. 

The most surprising circumstance is, that at this epoch of our 
national life the question of education as a public system, should 
call for debate. The applause which every suggestion to exalt and 
advance the system meets before a public audience, proves that 
the people agree — the people understand — the people are ready 
to sustain, and the author believes sincerely that the Honorable 
Legislature needs no instruction. It is nevertheless true, that in 
the general walks of life, some few minds are recalcitrant, and that 
a spirit of resit^tanee to the institutions of the country, prompts 
a few members in the Legislature to envy the nation her glory. 



A few words then to show the utility of a public system of 
education, carried to the highest possible degree which its bene- 
ficiaries will accept, and without regard to the age of the appli- 
cant, may not be considered at the present crisis as wasted 
breath. 

If Americans in the exercise of their elective franchise, claim 

to be sovereigns, and hold the most instructed men they can select 
to be their servants, then surely sliould sovereigns aim to be as 
well educated as their representatives. This, the pressure of life's 
necessities precludes, but, if they will not approach the nearest 
possible to this point, then let them lay down the pretension and 
the sceptre of sovereignty. 

It is time that the terms " common " and " ordinary," which 
qualify the character of the education to be provided by Public 
Schools, should be abandoned, except as they express that 
instruction which all may acquire in common, and on a basis 
of just equality. "Ordinary" and "common" indeed is that 
education which consists of nothing but the art, indifferently 
perfected in very many instances, to read, to write and to cipher 

The wonderful development taken by the mechanic arts within 
the last few years in America, calls for a far higher general 
educatioi^ than sufficed when the Pilgrims landed on the Plym- 
outh Rock. The immense and complicated machinery now 
everywhere employed ; the grand extension the arts have 
assumed ; the exquisite styles of ornamental architecture em- 
ployed, all unite to demand an advanced knowledge of the 
exact science? before a man can be said to be educated. Workers 
in wood and in iron, miners in earth and in rock, must expect to 
be baffled and disappointed and toil their life away, unless they 
aid their sinews, at the outset, with the geometric elements and 
principles of their several vocations. 

How many mechanics, who will surprise you by their manual 
dexterity, can correctly write and spell the bill for their work? 
How many merchants know how to keep their own books ? In 
the hour of distress they must call an expert to balance their 
accounts. 

Reading, writing and ciphering, cannot in strictness be called 
an education : thev are but the tools bv which an education mav 



6 

be wrought out of the materials furnished by the exact sciences. 
Education is the ability to employ those materials in the practical 
operations of life. To furnish a man a plough does not make 
him a farmer ; to give him a compass and a sextant does not 
render him a navigator ; to hand him an axe does not render him 
the intrepid pioneer of America. Languages are but imple- 
ments. They are incentives to industry, by supplying the means 
to delve deeper into the book of nature. A man is not wiser 
because his education is adorned with the acquisition of many 
languajres, but because he possesses increased facilities to inter- 
communicate with his fellow-men — to grasp knowledge not to be 
found in his native tongue. It is true, the mind receives useful 
training in the acquisition of languages, merely as beautiful 
accoraplighments ; but the true value of these is their use as 
tools of trade ; as the almost indispensable means to every day 
practical ends. What an unmerited libel is perpetrated upon 
the Greek and the Latin, those parent tongues, when they are 
called dead languages ; when it is proposed to throw them from 
the windows of the school-houses as useless furniture ; the rich 
man's trash. They are, in truth, the most living of them all. 
You scarcely utter a sentence in which they do not live and 
breathe ; they are the oxygen and nitrogen in the vital breath of 
speech. The nomenclature of every science is made of them ; 
the technology of every practical and useful art is composed of 
them, except where the trite terms of illiterate laborers are 
introduced. The ability to trace the meaning of a. term to its 
Greek or Latin composition, is the most rapid way to learn its 
definition ; often saves long and tedious verbal explanation, and 
serves an invaluable use, when a technical term is thus deci- 
phered, as the memory's best mnemonics. 

The great utility of the modern languages is in the speedy 
diffusion of European knowledge in ideas, discoveries, inven- 
tions and scientific facts applicable to the immediate advance- 
ment of human happiness. Heretofore, America has been 
indebted to England for their slow translation ; now, we are 
our own pioneers in those fruitful fields. Formerly, the literary 
agents of English publishers swarmed the continent, gleaning 



the useful discoveries of every country, which, when profited of 
at home, were rehashed and sold to us in books and journals. 
At present, the Motleys diffuse through Europe the abiding love 
of American institutions through European history ; and the 
Drapers exhaust, without English intervention, the original 
sources of knowledge for the benefit of American schools. 

Were American society composed only of Americans, the 
study of foreign languages might be dispensed with, but, espe- 
cially in California, where foreigners commingle so intimately 
in all the relations of life do they become indispensably im- 
portant. Foreigners are slow to acquire English, and hence it 
becomes necessary to meet them more than half way in crder to 
associate. The most prominent reason why the petty antipathies of 
nationality exi?t, is to be found in the want of language intelligi- 
bly to harmonize. The fraternity of nations can best be promoted 
by a fraternization, a coalescence and co-operation of languages. 
As regards charging the memory with foreign tongues merely 
as decorative accomplishments, but little favorable can be said. 
The same industry employed to cultivate some branch of physi- 
cal science would yield a more useful result. Only invaluable 
are they as auxiliaries to acquire available knowledge. Hence 
in the study of music, Italian is needed ; in the sciences, French 
and German ; in the commerce of Mexico and South America, 
Spanish. 

Who will read the works of Max. Mulkr, of Marsh, and Dra- 
per, and not admit that when the youth of the State arc in- 
structed in the beauties of languages, the path to greatness and 
distinction is not opened to them in the fertile fields of Eth- 
nology. 

The future commerce of California with Oceania and with 
Asia, bursting upon San Francisco as a commercial centre, with 
a rapidity so great that it lacks the resources to engross it, will 
render a knowledge of Oriental languages not less neces?ary 
than the European. Interpreters, commercial agents, explorers, 
secretaries, ethnologists, artists, all may see fame and fortune 
before them. Of the thousands in the public schools why are 
not some hundreds already choosing this career. Orientalists in 



hosts will be in demand. The public schools should meet the 
call. Where the applicant appeals, there should be the teacher 
to grant. 

Drawing, or the art of design, is often pointed at as a super- 
fluous study. It is only another mode of writing ; it is the 
shorthand of idiographic teaching ; while the hands are young 
and the fingers pliant they are the most easily trained to pre- 
cision : the picture teaches at a glance that which it would cost 
pages of verbal description to explain. The books of science 
of the .present day teem with illustrations and therein it is that 
the youth of this age far outstrip those of former years in the 
rapidity of their education. He who learns to-day will teach 
to-morrow and to him should be given every facility with which 
to stamp his thought on paper. Let the machinist, the en- 
gineer, the shipbuilder, the architect, the mechanic, the engraver 
all answer what can they do without their drawings and their 
plans ? 

Public schools do not make scientific nor practical men, they 
create them by supplying the incentives ; they but give the keys 
to the temple of science ; they supply the implements of the 
workshop, and it is the public interest to provide as many keys 
and the finest implements the students can be induced to accept. 
.Self-educated men are the admiration of the world, but what 
toils have they undergone. The tone of their writings is sad 
with their yearnings tor an early education. If they did much, 
how much more might they not have accomplished had they 
enjoyed the luxury of a well-appointed public school ? Frank 
lin would have roamed in a wider sphere of philosophy. Hugh 
Miller would have earlier deciphered the fossils of the old red 
sandstone, and Wingate, the collier-poet of Scotland, had no 
occasion to sing : 

" His lamp is buniiug on his head wi' feeble flickering ray, 
And in his heart the lamp o' Hope is burning feebly tae." 

For the same reason also the people of California might earlier 
appreciate why in the geological survey of the State the study 
of the fossil shells of the rocks are the indispensable precursor 
to the illustration of the state's geology. 



9 

The degree to which this progressive education ought to be 
carried should only be limited to the ability of the recipient to 
take it. The law admits the public pupil to its advantages to 
the age of eighteen years ; and it would be a sotirce of regret 
that this time should be shortened, a? it would greatly diminish 
the degree of education to be imparted. At the age of fourteen 
much of the implemental education may be acquired, and its 
application to true study, that is the acquisition of knowledge, 
may commence ; for which four years of the legal term remain. 
Earlier the mind will scarcely have reached the maturity and 
force to appreciate either the value or the facts of knowledge. 
At the age of fourteen, however, the youth has maturity enough 
to select his plan of life ; or his parents may do so for him. 
We are not of those who believe that natural genius is the in- 
stinctive guide, and that its promptings should be waited for. 
Exceptional cases of rare genius cleave their own pathway, but 
the majority of pupils are the plastic creatures of development. 
The Gordian knot is the choice ; this decided, the way opened, 
and the mental faculties lend their concurrence with wonderful 
aptitude. If in the future, a long latent talent suddenly peers 
forth, the time will not be lo>t, for the transition can be easily 
made. At the age of fourteen then, tJie choice of vocation might 
he forced, and the embranchment in education commence. By. 
this system it is evident the fatal process of cramming the 
memory to its prejudice, and to the neglect of the reasoning 
faculties will be avoided. The choice of life adopted, the stu- 
dent directs himself to those departments of science and art 
which are conducive and collateral to his object. It would be 
agreeable to trace this view in its ramifications, but the occa- 
sion permits only an outline sketch. At the end of the four 
years, however, the pupil whose good fortune has permitted him 
to cling 1o his national alma mater to his nineteenth year, will 
just be prepared to enter the arena of life and compete for the 
honors of distinction ; or, if his choice has been one of the pro- 
fessions — of theology, law, or medicine — he will be competent 
to commence their acquirement. Allow then four years until 
the age of twenty -two, to attain the incipient knowledge of a 
profession ; and the man thus educated, even though he posse&s 



10 

no conspicuous genius, will be qualified to assume the dignity 
and responsibility of a professional career. Without such an 
inauguration it would be wise to allow no one to pretend to it. 

It is freely admitted that the safety of republican institutions 
depends upon a highly cultivated and universally extended pub- 
lic education. It is also generally admitted that the free-school 
system of education is no charity to the poor, but a public duty 
of self-interest and national preservation ; again, it is clear that 
to procure that education by incurring a debt is not giving but 
lending it, with the obligation of the recipients to pay for it 
themselves when the capital or bonds should become due. It 
will probably be further conceded that the nation relies upon 
this American public education to correct, to qualify and to 
guide, not only the ignorance and bald self-interestedness, but 
the heterogeneous political and religious theories and dogmas 
introduced by the immigration of people of all creeds into the 
country. If this education fail, not only to infuse but to control 
if necessity wei-e, the leading principles of the American sys- 
tem, what will become of your republic, and to what degene- 
ration will your boasted freedom of thought and speech decline ? 

If, then, the truth of these views be granted, what becomes of 
the proposition in the bill of Senator Hagar, that in case there 
should be a deficit of funds, as alleged, the entire beautiful 
fabric of American education in California shall by legal enact- 
ment be reduced, cauterized, amputated, down to the age of 
THIRTEEN years ? 

The present law admits pupils from four years to eighteen years 
of age. The restrictive proposition of the Hagar bill reduces the 
term from seven to thirteen years, thus shortening it at each 
extreme ; and while preferring the primary department, closes 
the high and grammar schools. Against such process we most 
respectfully protest, and suggest precisely the reverse. Should 
retrenchment be inevitable, it would appear more rational to 
muster the primaries out of service, proportionately to the 
emergency. The most needful are those who are presently 'to 
be forced prematurely upon the stage of active life, and solicit 
all of learning they can obtain for immediate practical use. 



11 

As well might we propose to cut off the two euds of the great 
Pacific Railroad, and content ourselves with laj-ing the rails in 
the middle of the prairie only, if the expense should threaten 
to exceed a trifle the funds in hand. In honest truth, the grand 
educational road to knowledge cannot admit of abbreviation at 
either end, nor yet at its centre. The city of San Francisco can 
only expand her arms and adopt for her motto the divine words 
of the greatest of Teachers : " Suffer little children and forbid 
thein not, to come unto me." 

The extravagance attributed to the Boards of Education in 
San Francisco since the origin of the school system, may be thus 
reviewed : 

In 1849 3 pupils 1 room. 

In 1866 10,007 pupils 47 public schools. 

Expenditure for buildings, 16 years $300,484 62. 

Average per annum $18,780 28. 

The value of relative wealth is here illustrated. 

Mr. J. C.Pelton has yet no estate, but he who first collected 
three pupils, to form the germ of the present Free School sys- 
tem, in 1849, is the worthy Superintendent of 10,000 in 1866. 

Perseverance in a life's idea has wrought its merited reward. 

If the Honorable Legislature complain of this as a luxurious 
display, may we not place as a suitable offset the demand of a 
new tax of ten cents on one hundred dollars to finish the State 
Capitol ? Should the latter tax be levied, we do not believe 
that a complaint would be heard from San Francisco. 

The inauguration of a great State system, like all vast enter- 
prises, requires heavy expenditure at the outset. The school 
system calls for type buildings as its exponents ; the [)olitical 
system demands its Capitol. If San Francisco schools make 
Senators, let the State prepare an adequate tenement to receive 
them. If a Board of Education have glided into a few more 
dollars expenditure than the budget contained, levy ten cents for 
one hundred dollars, temporarily or permanently, in addition, 
rather than cripple the noble work. Will a precedent in ex- 
travagance be asked for ? Take a view of the State Capitols of 
Benicia, San Jose, Vallejo and Sacramento. The Board of 
Education of San Francisco has never proposed to build Lincoln 
palaces all over the city, but to erect several exponent type 



12 

edifices, certainly not less elegant than the costly college of St. 
Ignatius, and then environ them with schools proportioned to the 
rarity or density of population in a given district. Those who 
look into th3 future, may see that in a few years the type palace 
of to-day will look as humble as the log cabin school-house 
described in a recent speech uttered in the hall of the Lincoln 
school ; and certainly it will cost no great architectural effort to 
excel the style of that edifice. 

But the new bill would restrict the Board of Education to 
ten thousand dollars, and fifteen thousand dollars, for wood or 
brick schools respectively. 

Away with petty restrictions ; appoint gentlemen to an 
honorable office, without salaries, and then handcuff them. We 
do not think a well finished wooden building of suflBcient size 
for any of the districts, can be raised for ten thousand dollars — 
unless for yet a year or two on the Seal Rock rancho, nor 
scarcely there, lest School Director Eolus should translate it 
to Contra Costa. The foundation of all school-houses should 
be elevated, /. e., no floor used for the reception of children 
should be lower than the natural soil, or the grade of a street. 
In basements, diptheria and doctors' bills are more favorably 
cultivated than reading find writing. All basements should 
have a sub-stratum of as[)haltum. The hnlls of schools shotild 
be spacious, with high ceilings, for under certain circumstances 
the breath of man is poison. Now, how can mere tenements, 
with these requisites, and suited to the wants of only five years 
to come, be built for ten or fifteen thousand dollars ? They 
would be empty tea boxes, at which the architect would blush 
and the community laugh. Moreover, it is known that when 
the general plan of a building is formed, the addition of the 
requisite architectural adornment, when wood is employed, 
increases but little the entire expens^e. 

Let the ahna mater of the boy display a style and taste which 
shall attract his eye and win his affection ; one which in his 
future life he may invoke with reverence and delight. Thus 
inspired he will prefer his country's welfare before his own life, 
and serve his nation rather than his home. 




022 166 703 



